MEDITATIONS: ZHUANGZI, CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The Spinning of the Heavens

Among other things, Yang and Yin are eastern archetypal representations of order and chaos, male and female, culture and nature. Furthermore, they are symbols both containing one another and revolving around one another. It is this relationship which can be described by, “The Spinning of the Heavens.”

By “spinning” I believe the author meant something like “revolution” or “transformation” rather than a physical whirling. In fact, there is quite stark and uncharacteristic evidence of this within the text itself:

“White herons gaze at each other, and before they move the pupil of their eyes, the transformative power of their fertility has disseminated. The male insect sings into the breeze and the female responds downwind, and with that the transformative power of their fertility has been disseminated. Each type naturally has a male and female, and thus does the transformative power of their fertility disseminate. The inborn nature of one cannot be exchanged for another; the allotment of life of each cannot be changed; time cannot be stopped; the Course cannot be blocked. If their Course is attained, whatever they do is right. If it is not, whatever they do is wrong.”

After that, Confucius did not leave his house for three months. When he came to see Laozi again, he said, “I get it! Crows and raven hatch their young, fish exchange milt, every wisp-wasp of a creature however meager is involved in transformation: whenever a younger brother is born, the older brother weeps. For a long time I have failed to be a companion to transformation, failed to be human as a way of participation in transformation. If a person is not a person as a form of participation with transformation, how can he transform others?”

Laozi said, “There you have it, Qiu!” (Zhuangzi 125-6)

The Zhuangzi’s meaning could not be clearer. To be in accord with the Great Course, that is, to affirm life as it is, one must allow oneself to become who one could be by flowing naturally through the cycles of Yang and Yin.

An image comes mind which I first learned from Bruce Lee. He describes (in The Warrior Within, if memory serves) his symbols of rank in Jeet Kune Do. One begins with nothing, symbolizing an unrefined state of nature. Then, one attains a Yin-Yang symbol to represent the contents of knowledge and wisdom gathered through training. The final symbol is an empty circle, representing a return to nature as conditioned by the knowledge and wisdom attained during the previous rank.

What does this mean?

It is the union of nature and culture which births a new, more adaptive hybrid. Archetypally, this is the Child born from the Mother and Father—the very Child who is the potential to become a Hero. And what is the Hero archetype but he who overcomes excessive chaos and tyrannical order by striding the line between them? That line is the Way, the Path, the Road, and the Course.

Earlier in the chapter, the Zhuangzi elaborates on why this union is necessary beyond symbols and metaphors—in other words, why nature and culture alone are insufficient to produce self-transformation:

Confucius was fifty-one years old and still had not hear of the Course. So he went south to Pei see Lao Dan. Lao Dan said, “I have heard that you are the most worthy man among the people of the north. Have you then attained the Course?”

Confucius said, “Not yet.”

Lao Dan said, “How have you sought it?”

Confucius said, “I sought it in standards and procedures. . . . I sought it in the yin and yang, but after twelve years of that I still have not found it.”

Lao Dan said, “No wonder. If the Course could be presented, every man would present it to his ruler . . . his kinsfolk . . . his brothers . . . his grandsons. The only reason this cannot happen is that, lacking the right host within to receive it, the Course will not reside inside, and lacking alignment on the outside, it can have no effect. . . . Names, ideals are shared public tools; no one person should take for himself too much of them. Humankindness and responsible conduct were the temporary lodging huts of former kings, suitable for a brief overnight stay but not for a long residence—for as soon as anyone is spotted there, a whole lot of blaming begins. The utmost Persons of old temporarily took up humankindness as a way forward, entrusted themselves for a night to responsible conduct, but only so as to wander in the empty wilds of the far and unfettered.” (Zhuangzi 122-3)

Culture and the products of culture are tools by which we facilitate our natural, intrinsic virtuosities. Culture is how our nature manifests its potential, how it follows in accord with the transformative revolutions of the heavens.

This is all to say that there is no conflict between Taoist wuwei and Confucian cultivation of conduct. Each state of being needs one another in order to serve its function within a human being. It is only when we forget that the nature of the transcendent universe is change, that culture, ideas, and morality are in fact Maps of Meaning—when we forget that the “Six Classics are indeed just the stale footprints of the former kings,” that our “present words are just further footprints,” and that “footprints are produced by the gait, but they are not the gait itself,” that we lead ourselves stray from the Way (Zhuangzi 125).

Zhuangzi. Zhuangzi; The Complete Writings, translated by Brook Ziporyn, Hackett Publishing Company Inc., 2020